State must get smarter about development

Posted: Wednesday, January 02, 2008

As the curtain was coming down on 2007, the U.S. Census Bureau released some data that put a stunning set of figures on what most Georgians have experienced in countless anecdotal ways, from having more company on the roads to seeing more and more houses rising from the red clay of former farmland.

According to the Census Bureau, Georgia was the fifth-fastest growing state in the nation for the year ending July 1, 2007, adding more than 200,000 people. In somewhat more concrete terms, the 202,670 people added to the state's population are roughly the equivalent of two communities the size of Athens-Clarke County - when the thousands of University of Georgia students are in town.

Of that total, 125,000 people came to the state from elsewhere in the United States or from abroad; the balance of the increase was due to the fact that births outpaced deaths in the state for the year. Overall, the new residents represent a 2.2 percent increase in the state's population, which now stands at approximately 9.5 million, making Georgia the ninth most populous of the 50 states.

The reason for the increase, which has been a trend for Georgia for many years, is elegantly simple. As Jeff Humphreys, director of the Selig Center for Economic Growth at the University of Georgia's Terry College of Business noted last week for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "People come here for jobs and to get educated and to retire." The latest population numbers, Humphreys told the Atlanta newspaper, show "the fundamental strength that Georgia has as an economic engine."

There are, however, at least a couple of very real questions as to whether the state can, or even should, sustain the kind of population growth in which more than two Sanford Stadium-sized crowds come into the state during the course of 12 months.

The first question, brought home by the continuing drought, is whether this state can count on having enough water - a resource that is fundamental to residential development and much of industrial and commercial development - available in years to come. The drought has suggested, in metropolitan Atlanta as well as in this part of Northeast Georgia, that public water suppliers may be approaching the practical limits of their ability to provide a reliable supply of that basic resource.

When they convene next week in Atlanta, state lawmakers will consider a statewide water management plan. But even with such a plan in place, local governments will, in the future, still have to confront the question of whether their local water supplies can support the kind of business and industrial development that is needed to sustain a growing population. At the very least, those local governments likely will have to start making conservation a more integral part of local water management initiatives.

Another question with a direct bearing on whether the state can sustain the kind of population growth it has experienced during the past several years is how its officials propose to deal with transportation issues. Specifically, the question is whether the state will continue to believe that it can pave its way out of congestion, or whether it might be time to make meaningful investments in public transit alternatives such as buses and trains.

In recent years, the term "smart growth" - shorthand for planning and development strategies that seek to be sensitive to environmental and other quality-of-life issues in developing livable communities - has moved into the vernacular, sometimes to be derided by advocates of a less thoughtful approach to development.

But in recent months, as the perfect storm of population growth, traffic gridlock and water-supply issues has gathered across much of Georgia, it has become apparent that this state simply must get smarter about handling its development, or it will risk not having any development to handle.